Don’t miss Katrina vanden Heuvel’s Editor’s Cut, her regularly-updated Nation weblog. Her latest post argues that the Democrats could be looking at a train wreck if the DNC, Howard Dean and the state parties can’t head off a situation in which back-room deals determine the Democratic nominee.
All of this discussion about primary elections seems to pale to the possibility that backroom politics may determine, what Democrats voting in the primaries couldn’t, our nominee. Is this politics as usual? We hope not. Then again, listen to vanden Heuvel:
One thing that’s clear after last night, we’ve got a tough and potentially ugly delegate fight ahead of us for the Democratic nomination. Not only might the unaccountable and undemocratic superdelegates come into play, but the prospect looms of a bitter intra-party battle to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates. The DNC, Governor Dean, and the state parties need to do some serious thinking – starting now – on how to avoid a situation where backroom deals determine the nominee and his or her legitimacy is called into question.
As most people know, the Michigan and Florida delegates aren’t supposed to be counted towards determining the nominee, a penalty for unilaterally moving their elections up in the primary season against the party’s wishes. The candidates agreed not to campaign in the states, and in fact, only Hillary Clinton appeared on the ballot in Michigan. Once she won both states, her campaign predictably began to argue that these delegates should be counted. This could force the Obama campaign into the unenviable position of looking like they are trying to block voters in two swing states. It’s a train wreck waiting to happen – perhaps to be played out before the national media in Denver.
The question is: what can be done to preempt this?
Read on HERE
(Copyright prevents me reprinting more of this interesting article)
So why waste time arguing. Democrats may be irrelevant in deciding who will represent us in the next presidential election, if we let it happen.
